SHTAR WORZ
SHTAR WORZ is a series of stories written by Thorvald of Lym spoofing the Star Wars feature films. It originated on Taniciusfox's board in response to short fan stories by christos200 that were lambasted for terrible writing; Thorvald describes it as a "teach-by-example" parody. The series is widely lauded by the IOT community, including christos himself. To date there are two completed stories with a third in development, respectively titled A NEu HOP, Teh EMporer stirkes BAUc, and ReTour ov teh CHEDDAR. Development Inspiration for SHTAR WORZ began with a comment by Thorvald in the thread for christos' A New Hope alternate universe stories, replying to a previous post by CivGeneral: : Several hours later Thorvald posted a thread titled "SHTAR W0RZ..... A NEu HOP", parodying the opening scene of A New Hope up to the droids' escape to Tatooine. The story's setting was initially intended to be a universe of original design with christos as the Emperor, but audience feedback adapted it into a spoof of the Imperium Offtopicum community at large, with christos instead serving as Luke. A NEu HOP ran from May 2012–July 2013 in eight serial installments, after which the project relocated to the IOT forum at CivFanatics. In 2014, Thorvald published the collected chapters as a novelette on his DeviantArt account. The second installment, Teh EMporer stirkes BAUc, aired on CFC's IOT subforum in October 2013 and concluded September 2015. It introduced Tanicius as Emperor Palpatine and Thorvald as Master Yoda. The third installment, ReTour ov teh CHEDDAR, aired November 2015 and is currently in progress. It was widely anticipated since the first episode for replacing Jabba et al. with the Downfall Gang, and especially by Omega124, whose character changes to a woman—a coincidental analogy both to Denis Lawson's dubbing in the first original two films, and Poppy Hands being dubbed by a male voice actor. Structure SHTAR WORZ reimagines the Original Trilogy as a struggle within Internet fandoms between good storytelling and a deluge of bad fanfics, analogous to the project's own origins. Substituting the Force is the "Farce", representing the spirit of comedy, of which the "Dork Side" reflects crass, clichéd and 'shock' humour. In addition to the numerous characters played by IOTers and frequent allusions to past games and lore, the stories also lampoon several other fandoms and the Star Wars franchise itself. Each story is told in serial installments that encompass varying numbers of scenes from the film. The story occurs at three levels: the original Author (spoofing Thorvald himself) embodies the archetypal badfic writer, attention-deficit with terrible spelling and grammar; he appears at the start of each story, ends the first chapter with a cliffhanger hook, and will sometimes interrupt a scene to lay down tangential notes. The story proper is told by an unnamed Narrator that acts as a curator for the audience, and peppers the plot with his own observations, reactions and criticism. Finally there are the characters themselves who, while sometimes leaning on the fourth wall, do not deliberately break immersion. External links * [http://imperiumofftopicum.proboards.com/thread/46/shtar-w0rz-neu-hop A NEu HOP on the IOT Forum] ** Novelette re-release on DeviantArt * [http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512331 Teh EMporer stirkes BAUc at CivFanatics] ** Novelette re-release on DeviantArt * [http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=558665 ReTour ov teh CHEDDAR at CivFanatics] Category:Literature Category:Epic winning